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The Program on Medicine & Religion

Promoting scholarship and discourse regarding medicine and religion

The Program on Medicine and Religion at the University of Chicago is a leading forum for scholarship and discourse at the intersection of medicine and religion. Despite ample evidence that religion often animates clinicians’ practices and that patients’ health behaviors and experiences of illness are often mediated by faith, the relationship between medicine and religion is rarely studied. The Program on Medicine and Religion aims to fill this gap by conducting rigorous empirical, historical, theological, ethical, and legal scholarship to enrich our understanding of the meaning of illness and the myriad ways that religion and medicine each respond to the human predicaments of illness, injury, disability, suffering, and death, often in complementary and mutually reinforcing ways. Read More

Latest News

Dr. Padela speaks on Interfaith Panel on End-of-Life Care Beliefs

Dr. Padela, Director of PMR's Initiative on Islam and Medicine, spoke on an interfaith panel with five other Chicago-area faith leaders exploring religious beliefs related to end-of-life care. The panel was hosted by Life Matters Media and the Council of Religious Leaders on March 19, 2015. A news summary and video of the event can be found here.

Dr. Sulmasy presented a paper on “The Process of Clinical Decision Making for the Elderly at the End of Life,” at the “Workshop on Assisting the Elderly and Palliative Care,” sponsored by the Pontificia Academia pro Vita, at the VATICAN, on March 6, 2015. Pope Francis held a special audience for the presenters, and spoke forcefully in support of palliative care.